ABSTRACT
The performer on stage who by his or her very presence generates some kind of mesmeric power over an audience may need little or nothing in the way of spectacle to achieve an impact. There is a personal electricity at work, as anyone who has watched Maria Callas in her televised Hamburg concerts will know. Without the aid of scenery or costume, and moving only from the waist up, she seems to be channelling the dramatic shapes of the music with a concentration so full it is impossible not to share it. Presence can also be associated with silence and stillness, with a figure who, like Prospero, redraws the hyperactive energy fields around him by remaining apart, on another wavelength. What, then, of the stars who belong to the razzle-dazzle tradition of theatre? The sparkle and razzamatazz can serve as a substitute for personal magnetism, or as a distraction from it. Watching a Las Vegas show we may be aware of how the simple mystique of presence can be drowned by all the star-effects produced by modern technology, but there are cases where an individual who surrounds him-or herself with dash and flash actually harbours some corresponding electricity that generates the real charge at the centre of the show.
